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1 June 2018

Exploring the Land of the Blue Poppy - Frank Kingdon-Ward & Tibet

A couple of streets away from the
house in which I grew up was our local park. It was a large, lovely green open space,
filled with tall old trees, winding paths, wide lawns, dense shrubberies and
colourful flower beds, with 1930s red brick and tile shelters, as well as a
children’s playground and tennis courts. In the middle of one of the lawns was
a large rhododendron shrubbery. I remember one sunny childhood afternoon spent excitedly
exploring this dense jungle with my friends – we imagined it was a tropical
island and we’d been shipwrecked, acting out our own little Coral Island adventure. Climbing through
the twisting limbs of the rhododendron bushes, finding hidden paths and open
pockets in which to make camps, shrouded from the outside world in the dense,
shiny dark foliage, feeling like intrepid explorers. Little did I know then
that appropriately enough those rhododendrons were very likely to have been
introduced to our island nation from far overseas by a genuinely intrepid
explorer – Francis ‘Frank’ Kingdon-Ward.

Cambridge University Press, 1913

Frank Kingdon-Ward is one of the
people I am presently researching for my PhD. He was the son of Harry Marshall
Ward, a noted botanist and professor at Cambridge University. Frank himself
seemed destined for an academic career until the early death of his father left
his family in financially straitened circumstances, cutting Frank’s formal
education short. Instead he began his working life as a school teacher in
Shanghai, but was quickly bored by the staid urban settler-colonial lifestyle
and so he jumped at the chance to join an American led scientific expedition up
the Yangtze to the borderlands of Tibet. It was a trip which changed his life.
This taste of exploration was more than enough to whet his appetite for a more
adventurous life. He quit his school teacher’s job and embarked upon a lifelong
career as a ‘plant hunter.’ Drawn back to the borderlands of Tibet, China,
Burma and India time and again over the course of a long life, making some
twenty-four expeditions to collect seeds and herbarium material for various
commercial plant nurseries and the two most prestigious botanical gardens back
in Britain, as well as others across the British Empire.

By the very nature of their
calling, it would seem, all explorers are eccentrics. Kingdon-Ward was
certainly a singular character. Often highly solitary he was happy to wander
over the high hills and down humid jungle trails on his own, enduring extremes
of cold and heat, leading a life of almost monastic simplicity. When travelling
in company he could drive some of his expedition companions mad. Lord Cawdor
lamented of one expedition: “It drives me
clean daft to walk behind him – Stopping every 10 yards and hardly moving
in-between – In the whole of my life, I’ve never seen such an incredibly slow
mover – If I ever travel again I’ll make damned sure its not with a botanist.
They are always stopping to gape at weeds.” Yet other companions were more
appreciative of the skills they learnt from him and were rightly in awe of his
profound botanical knowledge and scientific expertise in the field. Ronald
Kaulback stated that: “Kingdon Ward
proved to be the kindest and most painstaking instructor it would be possible
to imagine, and I was always picking up new hints from him. He very soon saw
just how very little I really knew about the things that mattered in the sort
of life we were leading, especially those which had to do with bringing back
useful information, and except when I was more than usually unintelligent (thus
meriting reproof), he never showed any sign of impatience at my frequent
questions.”

Menconopsisbaileyi, later reclassified as Menconopsisbetonicifolia

Kingdon-Ward discovered many plant
species which were new to Western science, and it was Kingdon-Ward who first
successfully collected seeds of the famous Tibetan blue poppy (Menconopsisbaileyi, later reclassified as Menconopsisbetonicifolia) which were
subsequently successfully introduced into the gardens of Great Britain. He
wrote a number of highly entertaining books about his travels. Eloquently
summing up his fascination for borderlands and his need to explore and seek out
the unknown, he wrote: “On the fourth day
we crossed the bridge which marks the frontier between two Empires. To us in
our little island, a frontier sounds a more or less nebulous quantity,
something drawn rather whimsically on maps, and a chronic source of petty
international jealousies as difficult to define as the boundary line which
gives rise to them. But this elusive idea becomes a physical reality when one
crosses the frontier of a British possession overseas, thus bringing into focus,
as it were, the days which are past and all that lies before one in the new
world. Especially is this the case on the return journey, when the hardships
are over.” Travel, it is often claimed, is as much a state of mind as it is
a state of motion – and it seems from reading this passage that Kingdon-Ward
would most likely agree.

The personal rewards of such a life
devoted to the pursuit of knowledge at the expense of personal hardships and
endurance were the fuel to Kingdon-Ward’s quiet yet restless character, the
recognition in the form of awards, medals, and new plant species bearing his
name, meant more to him than what little money he made from his work. Even at
the age of 73, despite his failing health, he was still planning and actively
making preparations for yet another expedition – but it was never to be, he died
whilst he was briefly back in the UK and is buried in the churchyard at
Grantchester, in his native county of Cambridgeshire.

There has only been one real
biography to date written of Kingdon-Ward’s extraordinary life, now sadly out
of print – Frank Kingdon-Ward: The Last of the Great Plant Hunters, by Charles Lyte (John Murray, 1989). Perhaps
someday someone will write a really decent in-depth examination of his life and
work worthy of his remarkable career, but until then the best and the only true
way to get to know the man himself is to read his own words. Reading his books
is a really enjoyable part of my research. So much so at times that it hardly
feels like a job of work! – Over the course of the summer I am set to get to
know the man (and several of his contemporaries) more deeply as I delve into
archives across the UK, examining this remarkable group of scientific explorers
as a whole. Earlier this year I began this phase of my research by visiting a small exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library which showcased
the work of Kingdon-Ward and three of his fellow botanical explorers, Reginald
Farrer, George Forrest, and William Purdom – a diverse set of characters from
very different backgrounds, all united by a single love of intrepid travel and
exotic flowers. And later this summer I am going to round off my research trips
with a visit to Kingdon-Ward’s grave.

Collecting in the Clouds, The RHS Lindley Library, 2018

In some senses archives are the
unexplored borderlands of history. The fascination of doing historical research
is wondering what discoveries await, lying hidden inside those old pages, those
hand drawn maps, and faded black and white photographs. Research is a different
kind of transitioning, a different kind of stepping into the unknown, it is the
search for new perspectives and different vistas, of worlds long since gone
yet well worth remembering.

4 comments:

Lovely article. When you visit Grantchester, be sure to check on the rose named in Frank's honour. It is planted some way from his grave against a south facing wall if I remember correctly. If you are lucky enough to see it in flower (assuming it has not succumbed to the vagaries of the climate) it should have pale pink fading to yellow. (Or is it pale yellow fading to pink? LOL)I'm fairly sure it has a label, and the church staff should know where to find it. The remains of Jean Rasmussen (formerly Kingdon) nee Macklin were interred with Frank. The actual plot being some distance also from the gravestone. The stone has a Berberis planted next to it with leaves which resemble holly.

Thanks, Olli. I will look out for them. I'm planning to go in early October. Grantchester Orchard is a long-time favourite place for my family. I didn't realise Frank and Jean were in the churchyard until I read Charles Lyte's book, otherwise I'd have visited them sooner. I spent a week in June looking through Frank's archive and hunting out his plants in the Botanics up in Edinburgh. Perfectly timed by pure chance to see many of them in flower, including the blue poppies they have there.